“A King’s Contempt, A Poor Man’s Lamb”

July 29, 2012 2Samuel 12:1-14

TAKE IT EASY – AND BE VIGILANT

Summer holidays are a time to kick back, relax, and take it easy –
but that doesn’t mean we can put our spiritual life “on hold”. God’s
enemies are relentlessly watching for ways to trip us up, so they can
capitalize on our sins and rub them in God’s face as it were; they’re
eager to find any excuse to show contempt for the Almighty. When we
carelessly trip, we provide them with that excuse.
At the start of 2Samuel 11, we find the “setup” for
such a moral lapse. Commentators estimate this occurred about 10 years
after David became established as king in Jerusalem. He became king at
age 30, ruled 7 years in Hebron, then another 33 years from Jerusalem,
so that would put him about age 47 when our story opens. Age 47: what’s
that represent for many men? The so-called “midlife crisis”; you maybe
realize your life isn’t quite turning out as you’d hoped or expected,
or perhaps you’ve reached the top of the corporate ladder and aren’t
sure what’s next. Some men try to cope with their midlife crisis by
indulging themselves, buying a motorcycle, starting skydiving, or
taking a plunge of a different sort – having an affair.
What are we looking for in order to satisfy our
heart’s deepest desires? Career? Toys? Sex? If so, in our desperate
plunge to find fulfilment, have we forgotten God who formed our heart
for Himself in the first place? (Ps 33:15)
11:1 says it was “In the spring, at the time when
kings go off to war...” David sent Joab his trusty military commander
and the army off to besiege the Ammonites - to finish the conflict the
Ammonites themselves had sparked previously. The author adds, “But
David remained in Jerusalem.” Hmm – is there an unspoken implication
there that David should have gone with them?
V2, David got up from a nap late one afternoon and
walked around on the flat roof of the palace; not unusual, it was a
place to catch the cooler evening breeze. Perhaps David was restless, a
little bored, susceptible to distraction, looking for entertainment
(remember, channel-surfing hadn’t been invented yet!). All his soldier
chums were miles away at the front. He was idle, enjoying a life of
indolence, feeling a bit purposeless. The perfect combination to fall
into the Devil’s trap: being in the wrong place, at the wrong time,
with the wrong attitude.

THE WOMAN, THE WARRIOR, AND THE WEASEL

From the high vantage point of the palace roof the king caught a
view that arrested him – a beautiful woman bathing, probably down in
her own place’s courtyard. While this would be protected from view at
street level, it her bareness was completely visible from the height of
the palace roof nearby. Whether Bathsheba was aware of this risk, we
can only guess.
So, guys, there are certain places and situations
that are just begging for temptation – such as being alone on the
computer late at night without any real purpose. And, ladies, please
don’t expose yourself unnecessarily in a way that could tempt a
brother! Unfortunately fashions these days tend toward ever-shorter
shorts, lower belts on jeans and shorts, and plunging necklines. But
you don’t need to bare yourself like some piece of cellophane-wrapped
meat on the shelf at a grocery store. You don’t really want the kind of
hungry-eyed oaf who’s looking for cleavage now and, supposing he does
marry you and gets bored at age 47, keeps letting his hungry eyes
wander to land on someone else. What you really want is the kind of man
who’s attracted by the qualities the apostle mentions in 1Peter 3(3f):
the beauty of the inner self, a gentle and quiet spirit which is of
great worth in GOD’S sight.
Back to our story. Whether it was Bathsheba’s brazen
brashness, or David’s daring dalliance, one thing led to another. David
sent for her and slept with her. We’re not told whether she protested
or was intimidated on account of his authority. One commentary notes,
“The despotic kings of the East, when they wanted a woman, would send a
courtier or officer to the house where she lived, who announced it to
be the royal pleasure that she should take up residence in the
palace.An apartment and maidservant would then be assigned to her, and
she became a sexual plaything of the king.So great was the power of a
king’s expressed wish that a woman had little or no choice in the
matter.”
If our passage two weeks ago (2Samuel 9) showed
David as ruler at his best, using his royal power to help someone poor
like crippled Mephibosheth, this chapter shows him at his worst and
most despotic – abusing royal power to seize whatever he takes a fancy
to. He already had half a dozen wives and many concubines. His act is
particularly sleazy when you consider that Bathsheba’s husband Uriah,
not just any soldier but a member of David’s personal bodyguard and one
of the so-called “Mighty Men”, is miles away camped out in the open
risking life and limb to defend David. But none of that gives David
cause to pause; he just barges right ahead, drawn at full throttle by
his lust. His adrenaline is pumping, his senses are aroused, his
nostrils are flaring in anticipation – it’s a real rush, making him
feel 20 years younger. But he’s forgotten all about decency, propriety,
and respect for this woman’s marriage, her husband, and his own vows.
A subtle but important issue in all this is that the
king is NOT above the law. God didn’t intent for rulers to act like
those eastern despots that treat women like objects, like playthings or
sex-toys. That’s abusive and degrading, dehumanizing. The king like
everybody else ought to be UNDER the law. God’s laws require humans to
respect others’ lives, wives, and belongings REGARDLESS of social
status. If you think about it, God’s laws actually elevate the lowly to
the same plane as royalty, in that respect.
11:5, nature takes its course after intercourse;
Bathsheba sent word to David indicating she was pregnant. Now the
affair could no longer be hidden. Her husband was away with the troops
and here she was up the stump. According to the law of Moses, both she
and the man responsible would be guilty of adultery and deserving of
the death penalty! Leviticus 20:10, “If a man commits adultery
with another man’s wife— with the wife of his neighbor— both the
adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.” That’s actually the
seventh of the Ten Commandments, “You shall not commit adultery.” (Ex
20:14) One thing leads to another, especially where sin is concerned:
before David’s done, he’ll have broken 3 if not 4 of the Ten
Commandments – coveting his neighbour’s wife, adultery, murder, and
possibly false witness (depending how you interpret his hypocrisy
towards her husband). Sin grows. It may seem all sweet and fun at the
first, but in the end it turns out really nasty.
Well, this development of pregnancy complicates
David’s fling considerably. He becomes a schemer, sneaky, a real weasel
as he pulls all stops to cover up the affair. He calls her husband
Uriah back from the front and tries to encourage him to have sex with
Bathsheba so it will seem like it’s Uriah’s child not David’s. 11:8
David tells Uriah to go home and even sends a gift after him so he and
his wife can really enjoy their evening together. When that doesn’t
work, next day David gets Uriah to eat and drink and get drunk, then
sends him home again, but both times Uriah insists on sleeping in the
guardhouse at the palace entrance (11:12). When David asks why, Uriah
protests that the Lord’s ark and Israel’s army are camped out in
combat, so how could he hang back and enjoy himself at home with his
wife? (Rather an indictment of David indirectly) If the ark were out in
the field as seems to be the case, that makes it somewhat a ‘holy war’
and troops were bound to remain ritually clean, i.e.no sex with women.
Uriah is showing himself to be very loyal both to his fellow troops and
to God. By the way, though he is a Hittite thus one of the ‘people of
the land’ and not an Israelite by birth, Uriah seems to have become a
worshipper of the Lord, for his name means “Yahweh is my light.” All
through this, Uriah’s blamelessness and righteousness serves as a foil
in stark contrast to David’s dastardliness.
Having exhausted his best attempts at a cover-up, in
11:14 David sends a letter to his commander Joab with instructions
unknown to the carrier, Uriah. Essentially he sends Uriah back carrying
his own sealed death warrant. Joab reads between the lines and arranges
for the faithful loyal soldier to be killed in the thick of the
fighting. Thus David breaks the Sixth Commandment, “You shall not
murder.” (Ex 20:13) Another capital offence; as Leviticus 24(17)
stipulates, “If anyone takes the life of a human being, he must
be put to death.”
Thus the cover-up seems complete. 11:27 after the
appropriate period of mourning, Bathsheba became David’s wife and bore
a son; and Bob’s your uncle, or so it would seem. No one was the wiser
– or those who were (like Joab) knew enough to keep their mouths shut.
The Bible adds, “But the thing David had done displeased the Lord” –
literally, it “was EVIL in the Lord’s eyes.”
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how other
people see us; what matters is how God sees us. You may be able to
‘pull the wool over’ people’s eyes, but you can’t fool God. 1Samuel
16:7, “The LORD does not look at the things man looks at.Man
looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”
I titled this section “The Woman, the Warrior, and
the Weasel.” How are you being weasely / sneaky / deceptive? Are you
trying to ‘put one over’ on everybody? On God? Though David seemed to
have gotten away with his mischief, Psalm 32 reveals he found the
weight of God’s hand heavy upon him when he tried to conceal his guilt.
He only found relief by confessing it. Vv3-4, “When I kept
silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.For day
and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the
heat of summer.” Sin tilts the weight of God’s wrath to lean against
you until you acknowledge it.

PROPHET’S PROBING, CONFESSED CONTEMPT

If David thought he’d gotten away with it – he had another think
coming. 12:1 “The Lord sent Nathan to David”: God holds kings
accountable; those in authority are not above the law of conscience.
Vv1-5 the prophet launched straight into a parable about a rich man who
had many sheep and cattle, and a poor man who had only a dear little
pet lamb. It grew up with him and his children, shared his food and his
cup, slept in his arms, and was like a daughter to him. This story must
really have appealed to David with his upbringing as a shepherd,
defending helpless sheep. With his particular background, he would
relate at a gut level, his emotions were drawn in; the prophet was
framing it in such a way that the king couldn’t help but see the
situation from the poor man’s angle. David the former shepherd boy
would be identifying with this poor man who so loved his sheep.
And then came the shocking injustice. When a
traveler came to visit, the rich man to prepare a meal took NOT an
animal from his own bountiful herds, but seized the single lamb of the
poor man and slaughtered it. Note the actions parallel David’s taking
of Bathsheba and slaughtering Uriah. It’s a perfect set-up: David falls
for it holus bolus. Vv5-6, “David burned with anger against the
man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did
this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over,
because he did such a thing and had no pity."”
Contemptible...awful...unthinkable.
David’s legal sentence of paying fourfold is based
on Old Testament law; Exodus 22:1, “If a man steals an ox or a sheep
and slaughters it or sells it, he must pay back five head of cattle for
the ox and four sheep for the sheep.” Incidentally, how many of David’s
sons died prematurely? Four: Bathsheba’s son, Amnon following his rape
of Tamar, Absalom following his abortive coup, and Adonijah following
his politically significant (if dumb) request for his father’s
concubine (12:18; 13:28f; 16:14f; 1Kings 2:25).
12:7 records Nathan’s piercing indictment after
David has swallowed the parable: “You are the man!” As the rich man had
cruelly taken and killed the poor man’s precious only lamb, David the
king had stolen poor Uriah’s wife. The truth must have come crashing in
upon David like a ton of bricks. HE was the one who “did such a thing
and had no pity”. He had been heartless, despicable. The parable made
it possible for him to see the heinousness of his trespasses. In
Scottish poet Robbie Burns’ language:
“Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursel's as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
And foolish notion.”
God’s truth, particularly His word in Christ and the conviction of the
Holy Spirit, helps us see ourselves as HE sees us. And that is grace.
God’s revealed truth helps us gauge the true significance of our
actions.
Nathan the prophet proceeds to enlighten David with
God’s perspective on the matter in vv7-9. “I anointed you..I delivered
you...I gave you..I gave you...And if all this had been too little, I
would have given you more.” The emphasis here is God’s gracious
generous loving GIVING-ness – but David was dissatisfied, not content
with all that God provided.
Nathan continues to speak for the Lord: “Why did you
DESPISE the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in His eyes?” David
had trampled on several of the Ten Commandments, and ignored God’s
promises to Him personally. V10B, “You DESPISED Me and took the wife of
Uriah the Hittite to be your own.” Hear the attitude? “You DESPISED Me”
/ My word. V14 “you have made the enemies of the LORD show utter
contempt...” NLT, “you have given the enemies of the Lord great
opportunity to despise and blaspheme him...” Are these talking about
earthly enemies? Would it not rather be enemies in the spiritual
dimension, Satan who loves to be the ‘accuser of the brethren’ before
God?
Our sin is a despising / showing contempt or disgust
for God’s grace to us. The sinful heart is bent or shriveled so doesn’t
appreciate the treasure of God’s pledge of Himself for our good. Think
of Peter saying to Ananias in Acts 5(3), “how is it that Satan
has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have
kept for yourself some of the money...?” In Mark 7(7f) Jesus referred
to evils such as sexual immorality, theft, adultery, greed, deceit, and
arrogance that “come from inside and make a man unclean”, that separate
us from God. Such attitudes are a despising of God’s grace.
In Philippians 3(19), Paul described “enemies of the
cross of Christ” this way: “Their destiny is destruction, their
god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame.Their mind is
on earthly things.” By contrast, Paul invited the church to consider
everything loss (rubbish or dung) compared to knowing Christ and being
found in Him; what was Paul’s burning passion? “I want to know Christ.”
(Php 3:9f) Not despising God or showing contempt, but treasuring
relationship with Him.
After Nathan unloads the word of the Lord, David
responds with true repentance. 2Sam 12:13, “I have sinned against the
Lord.” He comes clean before God. There’s no hint of blaming others or
self-justification, making excuses; he acknowledges his primary offence
is against God. Psalm 51:4 comes from this occasion: “Against
you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so
that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.”

CONSEQUENCES, YET SURPRISING GRACE

After the conviction triggered by the parable, and confession, comes
surprising assurance of God’s grace and mercy. V13, Nathan replied,
“The Lord has taken away your sin.You are not going to die.” Who bore
the penalty for David’s sin? God took it to the cross of Jesus His Son.
Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God
is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Sin has deadly consequences,
yet God arranges eternal life for believers as a gift. Romans 5:6,
“when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” He paid
the penalty for us. That made it possible for God to “impute” or
“credit” Christ’s righteousness and innocence to us. Romans 4:4f,
“Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but
as an obligation.However, to the man who does not work but trusts God
who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as
righteousness.” It’s all God’s doing; our role is to believe and
trust. Sheer gift, NOT obligation or ‘what we’ve got coming to us’ –
that would be consequences of our sin.
Though David is forgiven and doesn’t get the
double-death penalty he deserves, there are still consequences for his
disobedience. Bathsheba’s child dies (12:14,18). But later in 12:24f
David comforts her and they have a second boy, whom the name Solomon;
and the Bible notes, “The Lord loved him; and because the LORD loved
him, he sent word through Nathan the prophet to name him Jedidiah.”
That means, “loved by the Lord” – what a beautiful name!
So, there are at least 3 wonders of grace and
forgiveness here. David doesn’t die; Solomon is born and loved by God;
and, third, David’s lineage through Solomon includes Jesus the Saviour
/ Messiah through whom God’s grace is effected. God could have just as
easily worked it through any other of David’s wives and sons, but He
chose to do it through Bathsheba and Solomon. So we read in Matthew’s
genealogy of Jesus, 1:6, “David was the father of Solomon, whose
mother had been Uriah’s wife...” Bathsheba even gets mentioned
especially!
So, even though David and Bathsheba’s start had been
sinful and evil, God was pleased to redeem it. He made their
relationship the vehicle or conduit of grace to us. Through them He
chose to fulfill His promise to Abraham and David, to bless many
nations. Praise God for His abundant mercy, and that He can turn around
the muck-ups of our lives! May He help us learn to recognize what is
evil in His eyes and to steer clear. Love and faith move us to desire
Him, not despise Him. Let’s pray.